REPRODUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT OP THE CONGER. 33 



we iiafer from this tliat some females also become sexually ripe 

 during the same period^ then the spawning season is extended from 

 December till October, eleven months in the year. If this inference 

 is correct it becomes very improbable that the month of November 

 should alone be excluded, and thus there is some ground for the 

 conclusion that conger spawn at any season of the year. I shall 

 have to refer to this question again before the end of this paper. 

 It is at least certain that actually ripe males, or gravid females, 

 have been observed in every month of the year except October and 

 November. 



The observed fact that both males and females cease to feed 

 when their sexual organs begin to ripen, satisfactorily explains why 

 it is that ripe specimens have never been obtained directly from the 

 sea, but have only been found among conger kept for some time in 

 captivity. For conger are usually caught by baited hooks, and of 

 course can only be captured in that way when they seek their food. 

 Occasionally they are taken in lobster pots, but they enter these 

 also for the sake of the bait. Conger are frequently taken in the 

 beam trawl, but as the gravid females in aquaria lurk constantly in 

 holes and corners, it may reasonably be supposed that in the sea they 

 remain in their hiding-places among the rocks, and that only those 

 which are hunting for prey can ever be captured by the trawl. 



The largest ova I have seen in newly-captured conger were '1 mm. 

 in diameter ; these occurred in a specimen examined in March. In 

 other large specimens the ova varied from "2 to '5 mm. in diameter. 

 The larger the ova in such specimens taken dii'ectly from the sea 

 the smaller the amount of fat-tissue ; when the ova are small the 

 fat forms the greater part of the mass of the ovary, but in more 

 fully-developed ovaries the mass of the ova exceeds that of the fat. 

 In the gravid females which died in the aquarium the ova when 

 first shed were "95 to a little over 1 mm. in diameter, and fat was 

 entirely absent from the ovary. It is evident that the fat is 

 deposited at first in the growing ovary in very great quantity, and 

 is afterwards used up for the nutrition of the developing ova. 

 Much of the fat is reabsorbed in this way before the female ceases 

 to feed ; the rest is exhausted during the period of fasting. The 

 difference in size between the largest ova observed in conger from 

 the sea, '7 mm., and the ova of the gravid females from the 

 aquarium, about 1 mm. before the formation of the perivitelline space, 

 may seem small, considering that the ova of the gravid females have 

 been developing for five or six months after the cessation of feeding. 

 But in the feeding conger the large eggs are comparatively few, the 

 rest are of all sizes, and the majority of them are quite undeveloped. 

 In the gravid females all the eggs are of about the same size, so 



NEW SERIES. — VOL. II, NO. I. 3 



